Damn. I didn't even think about it being an online account. If you use outlook or outlook express to retrieve your mail the results will be limited depending on how old each item of mail is. The standard configuration for these programs is to delete the items from the mail server as they are downloaded to your system. The trash on the mail server is deleted daily or weekly depending on who your email provider is. I don't remember how often yahoo domps trash.

If you do not use outlook or outlook express and just view your mail online they will still be in the trash bin unless you emptied it.

I played around with the google OS today. The desktop is very much like an Apple/mac system. So if you like macs you will probably find it very easy to use. It takes advantage of online software and data storage. I did not play around with the software any though. If you are used to windows you will find Ubuntu much easier to use Although you can probably install the Gnome or KDE desktops on it without any trouble. I am not a mac user and it has been a while since I have even played on one so it is not what I would choose. I just ran it off of the live cd and have not installed it yet. I probably will wait untill I free up one of my back up systems.

I could not find anyplace where it gave minimum system requirements. Anyone know what the minimum amount of ram for it is?

February 5, 2008 When Steve Sinchak's new Intel network card became "really slow" after upgrading his Windows Vista PC with a pre-release version of Service Pack 1, he tried uninstalling its software driver and replacing it with a new one.

But to his dismay, the Chicago-area technology author and blogger found himself "stuck in a loop" during the InstallShield-managed process -- unable to replace his sluggish older driver with a new, peppier one.

"It's messed up to the point where I may have to use brute force to uninstall the driver, or wipe my hard drive and reinstall Windows Vista completely," he said.

Sinchak's is an example, admittedly an extreme one, of the driver

problems that forced Microsoft to take the unusual step of holding SP1's availability to users until March even while announcing its release to manufacturing (RTM) on Monday.

Not even the hundreds of thousands of people who have already been testing Vista SP1, nor the many Windows developers accustomed to being able to download software on Microsoft's MSDN or TechNet Web sites immediately after RTM, will be able to get SP1 for another 6-8 weeks.

And if you are one of the unlucky Vista users using a driver known to break and need reinstallation after the upgrade to SP1, Windows Update will quarantine you from getting SP1 until the driver is fixed.

"We want all of our customers to have the same good experience," said Microsoft senior product manager, David Zipkin, in an interview Monday. "That's why we're erring on the side of caution."

Cancel or allow or shut up already?
Service Pack 1 remains the milestone by which many companies and consumers judge when a Microsoft product is truly bug-free and mature enough to deploy. Any delay in SP1 could have an adverse effect on Vista uptake, which has been generally strong -- more than 100 million copies shipped -- despite a lukewarm market response.

Zipkin points out that most drivers, once re-installed after the SP1 upgrade, should work properly.

That was the experience of several Computerworld readers.

Zipkin blames hardware vendors for failing to strictly follow Redmond's instructions on how drivers should be installed.

"The issue is that the drivers were not written per the spec we have on MSDN to ensure successful updates," he said, a spec that "has been around since the XP days."

Zipkin declined to elaborate or comment on Sinchak's case. And neither Intel nor Macrovision Inc., maker of the InstallShield software, immediately responded to requests for comment.

But some experts think that the problem must be related to under-the-hood changes in Vista SP1, especially those concerning security and user privileges, which can directly affect how applications and drivers are installed.

"Microsoft looks like they are monkeying around with a lot of lower-level stuff," said Paul Morris, a project manager at QualityLogic Inc., a Moorpark, Calif. software and driver testing firm. "In my mind, you've got to treat SP1 as an entirely new OS."

Vista's overhauled security model had two major changes. First, local users who were formerly granted administrator access by default are granted standard access in Vista. Second, a new feature called User Account Control, or UAC, prompts users to verify whenever a new application or driver is about to be installed.

Both moves help to prevent viruses and malware from taking hold. But UAC has been criticized by some users for its overzealousness, though UAC pop-ups decrease dramatically after the first month, according to Redmond.

I installed Vista when it first came out, I reverted to XP within a week and have not reinstalled Vista yet. Bells and Whistles mean nothing to me in an operating system. If I wanted bells and whistles over actual function I would just buy a fucking Mac.

Ok, heres what I would like to be able to do and maybe someone here has some insight on how to pull it off. I would prefer to use a single, mid-grade computer to run an application server and several browser windows which are having text-based data entered by users. Is it somehow possible (and economically viable) to connect this single PC to several (up to 10) monitors and have them each display a different browser window instance (so 10 people could simultaneously enter data). Is this possible or do I need to have 11 computers--one as the app host and the others just running a single browser window? The main reason I would like to get it done on a single computer is the lack of power on the playa and these would basically need to run 24 hours a day.

EDIT: Just thinking about it, the configuration would also need to accommodate a keyboard and mouse for each monitor. I am starting to wonder if this is even doable now...

Ok, heres what I would like to be able to do and maybe someone here has some insight on how to pull it off. I would prefer to use a single, mid-grade computer to run an application server and several browser windows which are having text-based data entered by users. Is it somehow possible (and economically viable) to connect this single PC to several (up to 10) monitors and have them each display a different browser window instance (so 10 people could simultaneously enter data). Is this possible or do I need to have 11 computers--one as the app host and the others just running a single browser window? The main reason I would like to get it done on a single computer is the lack of power on the playa and these would basically need to run 24 hours a day.

EDIT: Just thinking about it, the configuration would also need to accommodate a keyboard and mouse for each monitor. I am starting to wonder if this is even doable now...

It's doable. There is a new adapter/computer that allows as many users as you want with just a monitor, keyboard and mouse but I can not remember the name of it just now. It's new and came out last year.
I'll get back to you as soon as I find it. I was just reading about it in the examiner last week.
This guy that just came out of retirement and a partner made it.

I finally have some appreciable internet access. Just ran a tug from Valdez AK, to Okinawa Via Guam and a few other spots.

so enroute my laptop crases and I try to restore it using my WD external harddrive after loading Windows XP pro and all the drivers. - Now the WD drive wont connect. Is itpossibel to have a virus on an external drive that just f's up every computer it touches? I think thats what it is doing?

Give me a little more info. When you say you are trying to restore the laptop I assume you mean that you have a complete image of your Operating System on this external drive? Or do you mean that you have already gotten the laptop back to a working state but you cannot access the external drive?

If it's the former: Restart and go into BIOS (you usually have to click delete or f1 or something while the computer is booting). Find "Boot Devices" or something similar to that wording. See if you can detect the external drive (make sure it's plugged in) and set it to boot from that drive first, cdrom second and internal hard drive last. This should let you restore the system via an image on an external drive.

If it's the latter: Do you get any errors or it just doesn't show up? Since it's an external drive it should be pretty easy to figure out what brand and model it is. Go to the manufacturer's website and download drivers for the hard drive. Install them, reboot and it should work.

It is possible to get a virus from an external drive but it's not likely. You do have a virus scanning software running right?

Thanks for the PM suggestions, It appears that I am a dumb ass. Apparently you cant just unplug the USB cable on an external drive when you think its done. So you guys were right no virus like i thought, misuse on my part.

WD (Western Digital) was kind enough to let me know that for 599.00 one of their allied partners can restore the data on this drive, as it is pretty buggered up now.

I guess I should have read the instructions before i just jammed cables into holes, and started swapping info around.

lol - any ideas or am I paying 600 to have a computer techie fix this bad boy? When i plug this external drive in the best I can get is a "Drive E" picture on my computer. Completely inaccessible though.

but if not then you should be able to format the drive. right click on the Drive E and sect the option to format. If it will not format then it may need to be Partitioned. I am not real familiar with how this works in win xp so if it needs partitioning DVDburner would have a better answer.

Box Burner wrote:If you need the data then western digital may be the way to go.

but if not then you should be able to format the drive. right click on the Drive E and sect the option to format. If it will not format then it may need to be Partitioned. I am not real familiar with how this works in win xp so if it needs partitioning DVDburner would have a better answer.

If you have your USB External Hard Drive already hooked to your computer, you can right mouse button click once on my computer and select manage.

A menu will open that looks like this:

If you look down the "computer management" tree you will see a storage icon. Click the plus sign next to it so it can open and you will see, just like in the pic above, "disk management'.

Click on "disk management' once and you will see this:

you will see your external drive there.

If you dont understand at this point what you are looking at then you should read this link

or if you dont want to deal with it, I suggest you get someone to do it for you.

It will be less that spending 600.00 BY FAR.

20-60.00 job.

If you want to keep going, then all you have to do is right mouse button click once on your drive and select delete partition..
Once deleted you will want to right mouse button click on it again to partition it.

That's basically it. if you follow the directions to the wizard that is running and select next, it will format for you once it's at the end of the wizard, automatically.

Make sure you understand exactly what they are offering. Restoring data sounds like they are going to search for your data , recover it and then reformat the drive. this would be good. Usually what I see for that price is done on a nonfuntioning drive. then the drive is dissasembled. this means purchasing a new drive.

If it is a failed drive be aware that the data could be partly or even completely unretrievable. there is no way to tell until they try to recover it. you could end up paying $600 for nothing. I am not saying this is the case, just make sure you understand what you are getting and what the charges cover before handing over your drive.

Microsoft has bought Caligari, a developer of 3D modeling software, in a move that could help enrich the graphics experience in Microsoft's Virtual Earth mapping system.

Caligari started making 3D modeling and animation software for the Amiga computer in the mid-1980s. Its signature tool, called trueSpace, has a user interface that makes it easy to build complex 3D animations, according to an entry on theVirtual Earth blogon Wednesday announcing the acquisition.

Caligari has offices in Mountain View, California, and Slovakia. Its development team will work with the Virtual Earth group, and Caligari's "tightly knit community of beta testers" will stay the same, said Roman Ormandy, founder and CEO of Caligari, in ablog posting. He said the company will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft.

"Now we will have more resources to rely on, larger market to consider and I hope more fun doing that," he wrote.

Microsoft was not available for additional comment.

In December, Microsoft bought Multimap, which also became a wholly owned subsidiary and works with the Virtual Earth and Search groups. Multimap develops online mapping services. At the time of that acquisition, Microsoft said the buy would help it expand its online services offerings to consumers and businesses.

Virtual Earth's 3D version, currently in beta, lets users zoom in and out of 3D maps of cities and natural areas. It is similar to Google'sGoogle Earthproduct.

The Web site for Indian antivirus vendor AvSoft Technologies has been hacked and is being used to install malicious software on visitors' computers, security researchers said last week.

The download section of AvSoft's S-cop Web site hosts the malicious code, according to Roger Thompson, chief research officer with security vendor AVG. "They let one of their pages get hit by an iFrame injection," he said. "It shows that anyone can be a victim. ... It's hard to protect Web servers properly."

The technique used on the site has been seen in thousands of similar hacks over the past few months. The attackers open an invisible iFrame Window within the victim's browser, which redirects the client to another server. That server, in turn, launches attack code that attempts to install malicious software on the victim's computer.

The malicious software is a variant of theVirutvirus family.

The iFrame pages are commonly used by Web developers to insert content into their Web pages, but because it is possible to create an invisible iFrame window, the technology is often misused by hackers as a way to silently redirect victims to malicious Web sites.

AvSoft, based in New Delhi, sells an antivirus product called SmartCOP and has sold a second antivirus product called Smartdog. The company, which is not well-known in the U.S., also specializes in recovering data lost due to virus attacks. The company could not be reached for comment Thursday afternoon.

That data recovery service could come in handy for some, as Virut is known as a "parasitic infector" virus that is extremely difficult to remove. "It infects all of your programs on your local hard drives, and then it starts hitting your network drives as well the first time you run," Thompson said.

Fortunately, the malware used to install Virut exploits only well-known bugs, meaning that users who are running antivirus software on fully patched systems will probably not be infected by the attack in its current state, security experts say.

Nobody knows how the malware got onto the Web site in the first place. News of the hack was reported on theFull Disclosuresecurity discussion list on Thursday.

McAfee Security Research Manager Dave Marcus believes that the site was compromised by exploiting a Web programming error, most likely in the site's SQL or PHP code. Security experts say that criminals have written automated programs that scour the Web for these types of flaws and then automatically infect sites, making this an increasingly common problem.

I get free antivirus from my ISP.. yall may want to look into it since your paying for it anywayz. I'm all about open source and all that but I don't like to take chances with anti-virus software. If I already didn't get McAfee for free I'd probably buy SpySweeper with the built in anti-virus.